For four months, Russian troops have been trying to seize the eastern Ukrainian village of Synkivka. On a map, this looks easy. Their forward position is on the edge of a forest. It is a mere 500 metres away from the Ukrainian frontline and a shattered collection of cottages.
Every few days the Russians attack. Their forays across open ground end in the same way: complete disaster. Armoured vehicles with men perched on top, speed across a landscape of moon-like craters and splintered trees. Soon it goes wrong. Some blow up on mines; others panic and reverse. The Ukrainians pick off fleeing infantry with drones and artillery. Typically, all the Russians die.
“It’s really fucked up down there,” Gleb Molchanov, a Ukrainian drone operator said, showing video he took from above the battlefield four miles north-east of the city of Kupiansk. The images are gruesome. Bodies can be seen lying in a zig-zag trench and frozen hollows. Nearby are the burnt-out carcasses of BMP-1 fighting vehicles, at least 10 of them. Despite this, the Russians keep trying.
The alcoholics like to say that the definition of insanity is trying the same thing over and over and expecting different results.